Fast Tip Friday: Using Groups to Maintain Quality Data #SageACT

As you meet contacts or prospects, you may be entering as much data as possible about them in your database. However, you may not have the complete details at the moment, but as you build your relationship, these details will get filled in. To quickly locate all of the contacts in your database that may have missing or incomplete data, you may create Groups that use dynamic criteria to add/remove users. Then, you can simply open a Group and have a list of all contacts whose contact data needs filling out.

Creating a Dynamic Group for Contacts with Missing Data

For example, imagine you would like to quickly locate contacts with a missing phone number:

1. In Sage ACT!, open the Groups view.

2. Click the New button on the Global toolbar.

3. Give the group a descriptive name, and optionally in the description field describe how members are added to this group. For example: “Phone field contains no data”

4. Next, on the Contacts tab of the group, click Add/Remove Contacts…

5. In the “Dynamic members” section, click Edit Criteria…

6. Select your criteria. For this example, “Contact” “Phone” field that “Does Not Contain Data” has been added to the criteria list. As a result, any contact whose Phone field does not contain any data will be added to the group. After setting criteria, click OK to return to the groups view.

7. After the group has been created, you’ll have any contacts that need additional information added to his/her record at your fingertips. When you are ready to update data, you may click the Contact name link from the Contacts tab to jump to the details of that record.

8. Update the record, and that individual will be removed from your dynamic group!

This simple trick enables you to easily keep track of contacts whose records may be incomplete, and maintain quality data in your Sage ACT! database.